Polls

Republican Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez continues to poll within single digits of his opponent, Democratic congressman Ed Markey, in the special election for Senate in Massachusetts. According to a new poll from PPP, first reported by BuzzFeed, Markey leads Gomez, a political newcomer, by 7 points, 48 percent to 41 percent.

As BuzzFeed points out, Markey may be shoring up the Democratic vote after a divisive Democratic primary:

Democrat Terry McAuliffe leads his Republican opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, in the latest poll of the 2013 gubernatorial race in Virginia. According to Quinnipiac, 43 percent of registered voters in the Old Dominion support McAuliffe, a businessman and former chairman of the Democratic party during from 2001 to 2005, while 38 percent support Cuccinelli, the state's attorney general.

Since just after his reelection last year, Barack Obama's job approval rating has dropped 8 points, according to a poll from Pew. Forty-seven percent approve of Obama's job, down from 55 percent in December.

Americans' economic outlook has soured, too. Here's more from Pew:

Barack Obama is fond of saying that “the majority of Americans” agree with him on his “balanced approach” to deficit reduction—which these days seems to mean increasing tax revenues through rate hikes and big defense spending cuts with relatively insignificant cuts elsewhere. At the beginning of his second term, the president appeared to be moving forward with an agenda that assumed the previous election settled the question of which party Americans liked more on taxes and spending.

Is Mitch McConnell already losing his reelection campaign? That's what a new poll from the Louisville Courier-Journal released Tuesday suggests. According to the survey of 609 registered voters in Kentucky, just 17 percent say they would vote to reelect the Republican and Senate minority leader, with 34 percent saying they will vote against him. Forty-four percent, meanwhile, say they will "wait and see" who will challenge McConnell in 2014 before making a decision. The firm Survey USA conducted the poll for the newspaper.

Barack Obama is now the first president in American history to win a second term with a smaller share of the electoral vote, a smaller share of the popular vote, and a smaller aggregate vote than when he was first elected. There are still votes to be counted, but as of this writing he actually has fewer votes than George W. Bush won in 2004.

I gather the first wave of the exit poll has the right track/wrong track at around 46/52.

Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts is in a dead heat to retain his Senate seat against Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, according to a new poll from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Boston Herald.

The last several weeks have not been good for Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana. The two-term state treasurer, who beat six-term incumbent Senator Dick Lugar in the GOP primary in May, has fallen back in the polls against his Democratic opponent, Congressman Joe Donnelly. A recent poll, from Brian Howey and Depauw University, showed an 11-point lead for Donnelly.

Two recent polls maintain that Republican Tom Smith of Pennsylvania is statistically tied with his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the race for the U.S. Senate. The first poll, an internal Smith poll released Friday, shows the candidates tied at 46 percent.

The four polls taken this week in Iowa that are listed by RealClearPolitics show widely different results.  NBC/WSJ/Marist shows President Obama up by 6 percentage points — 50 to 44 percent.  Gravis Marketing

In the second poll released this week, Republican Scott Brown has a two-point lead over Democrat Elizabeth Warren in the Massachusetts Senate race.